May 19, 2017 Newsletter

Africa Day-Celebration–Potluck lunch-End of Year Celebration May 24 at 12:00

Africa Day-No School- May 25

Grades Close- June 9

Student Led Conferences- June 12

Last Day of School- June 16

First Day of School- September 6

From the Office

It is hard to believe there are only four more weeks of school! Teachers are working hard to finish up the classroom curriculum, but please remember regular classes will continue until June 9. So, please plan on having your child in school until at least that date. The final week of school is our traditional Sunset Week. During Sunset Week, we spend the week doing special activities that encourage creativity, teambuilding, sportsmanship, and fun.

Next Wednesday, May 24, we will be celebrating Africa Day. We usually have an end of the year celebration, but due to the timing of Ramadan we will not be having that in June. For this reason, we are asking parents to participate in our Africa Day celebration with us. The morning is for students only in which the children will have the opportunity to rotate through presentations and activities on eight separate African countries. At 12:00 we will have a potluck; we are asking each family to bring in enough food to share with the other students and families. Please bring in food that is representative of your country of origin or an African dish no later than 11 on this day; we will eat together so please be on time. Following lunch, the students will have a short presentation that you are also invited to, and then we will have early dismissal. There will be no school on Thursday, May 25 for Africa Day.

Just a reminder that your child(ren) have brought home a white piece of paper that is the cut out of the figure of a person. This will be part of their presentation for May 24. We are asking each family to spend time together to decorate their cut out figure. We encourage you to decorate with cloth and other materials that you have access to in order to make it look as real as possible. This should be a fun activity that the parent/s and child/children work on together, so we hope you enjoy yourselves. Please send them back to school with your child by Monday, May 22. Thank you for your support!

In Preschool class we have continued to explore and learn with our theme:“Light andDark”.We learned that most of the light comes from the sun, light is important because it helps us see, helps the plants grow, and is needed to warm the earth. We also explored Night and Day using flashlights, we had a black and white dress up day, a pretend Night OUT, a Camp Day Out with our pretend camp fire using our play blocks and flashlights, we played with our friends in the tents set up, and we had fun eating our snacks around the camp fire. We can now count numbers up to ten, and we are still reviewing all the shapes and colors we have learned this school year.

-Ms. Pat

Prekindergarten

In Pre-Kindergarten the children are learning about “Animals and Where They Live”. We are exploring animals, focusing on places where they live such as on a farm or in a pond, and we are learning their names and the sounds they make. The students have enjoyed singing the song, “Old Mac Donald Had a Farm” and adding actions for each animal. We have discussed what a farm is and what animals might live on it. The children have shared the story, “Over on the Farm” which shows a mother animal and her babies. We have learned about products we use from animals such as eggs from chickens, milk from cows, and wool from sheep. The students pretended to milk a cow using plastic gloves which was really fun, and explored real eggs both boiled and raw. We have also discussed that ducks, fish, and frogs, live in a pond and that turtles can often be found in ponds too. They learned how they move while enjoying the finger play “My Turtle“ and singing “Old MacDonald had a Pond”. They enjoyed moving like animals and playing the game “Guess the Animal”. In Math, we have been learning about positions of shapes using different shapes to describe their orientation. We have been reviewing all the shapes, colors and other math concepts covered in class such as sorting, patterns, more than or less than, and position words.

They are also learning the letter Xx and Ee; they are learning how to write them and the sound they make. We have been reviewing all the letters learned by trying to say their sound and finding words they begin with.

We would like to say thank you to Miss Pat’s class for inviting us to camp with them last Tuesday. It was really fun.

I wish you all a great weekend!

-Ms. Fatiha

Kindergarten

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Hello! I hope everyone is doing fine. It is time again to update all of you about the recent activities and lessons we have focused on these past couple weeks. In Literacy, we are reviewing The Letter Light People vowel letters: a, e, i, o, u and the consonants: G,H,K,L,M,S, and V. We are practicing our reading skills as well as our writing skills. In Mathematics, we are reviewing how to solve addition word problems, using objects and also using a number line. In Science, we are enjoying, exploring and learning the different uses of fabrics. We are still practicing our skills on tying our shoelaces, whew!! It is not easy, but with continuous practice, I do believe the students will soon learn and benefit from this basic skill. You can also help your child to practice at home. We are also singing our year end school song entitled, “Wonderful Celebration”. There are some hard words that your kids cannot read; if you are available please practice the song with your child, or just let the child listen to it repeatedly so that they can memorize it easier. Thank you for preparing healthy foods and snacks for your children; I have seen a variety of nutritious foods during snack and lunch time. Just a reminder: lunch time is at 11:45am. Your child/ren’s lunch should be here before that time. Also, please bring an extra snack every Friday. We do go home early, however, Kindergarten still has a break.

As always, thank you for entrusting your children to TLC International School. You will be hearing from us again soon in the upcoming newsletter. Have a nice a day.

-Ms.Joyce

Grade 1

Greetings Parents!

In Math, we have been finishing up our unit on place values and have learned to identify and group hundreds, tens, and ones. In addition, we have been learning about how to use graphs and tally marks for organizing our data. Students had a test over their unit on telling time and most did very well; their tests were sent home for your review. The students should all know how to tell and write the time to the hour and the half hour using an analog and digital clock.

During Language Arts, we continue to focus a lot on reading comprehension within our reading groups: Jaguars have just finished reading a book entitled, What’s New at the Zoo and will begin their reading comprehension questions, Kittens have begun reading a book entitled, The Good Life, and Lions have completed two sections – The List and The Garden – within a book entitled, Frog and Toad Together; they have also worked on reading comprehension questions for the aforementioned two sections. We have also spent time journaling based upon the topic: If you had three wishes what would they be and why? And the other topic: Name one thing you like about yourself and why. In class, we have also covered dictionary skills; we are extremely happy to see the students using their dictionaries now to look up words instead of asking us how to spell words. Way to go Grade 1! During phonics, we have covered the ow and ou sound. During our grammar lessons, we have finished up our section on comparative and superlative adjectives and have now begun working on commands (e.g. Please take a seat.). Lastly, we continue to work on our Wordly Wise program and let’s not forget about our weekly spelling tests. We strongly encourage you to engage your child in discussions on what they are learning in school.

Though some have improved, we are still experiencing some students walking into class during first period tardy, and some students have not been completing their homework. Please encourage your child to go to bed earlier and also ask to see their homework nightly. If you have any questions, please feel free to call us or come in to schedule an appointment; we welcome you! Thank you for your continual support!

-Ms. Eno/Ms. Soldana

Grade 2

In Language Arts lessons, we have been doing lots of creative writing during journal time where the idea is to let our imaginations flow; some very interesting stories have been written. As our writing becomes more fluent, the characters and story lines have become more defined. We have also been reading lots of stories during our reading groups.

During Mathematics, we have been improving our multiplication and division skills and completing problem-solving exercises.

In Science, we have just finished our Balance and Motion experiments on spinning tops where the students designed their own models.

In Physical Education classes, the emphasis has been on developing our team skills and on how to defend and attack in a variety of activities and sports.

Thank You,

Mr. Nick

Grade 3

Dear Parents,

It seems like more students are starting to get going with their IXL. Congratulations to those who have started to put some effort into it! We hope next year this will happen earlier during the first trimester.

In Language Arts we are now learning about prepositions and we will start with the different use of commas this week. In spelling we are working on homophones: words that sound the same but mean different things and are spelled differently. We have also started Wordly Wise lesson 7.

We finished our unit about fractions in Math and we have now started a very short unit on decimal numbers and measuring. We will be having a test on Thursday and starting our unit 11 next week on multiplication and division with two-digit numbers. I would like to encourage all students to spend five to ten minutes every day reviewing multiplication facts since these will be an important area of focus at the end of the year and also in fourth grade.

In Social Studies, students are working in their groups on their final project. For these, they will have to create a Power Point presentation with some facts and illustrations about a specific topic and present it to the rest of the class. Students are excited since this is a good opportunity for them to implement what they have been learning during their IT lessons.

Students are assigned spelling and math homework every day. Part of this homework is also reading and practicing IXL online. Please, encourage your child to read every day as well as review multiplication and division facts. As usual, IXL tasks will be assigned on Mondays and students will have a whole week to complete these, and it will be graded as part of theirweekly homework.Thank you for all your support.

-Ms. Patricia

Grades 4/5

Dear Parents/Guardians,

I hope all is well. Here is an academic update for Grades 4/5.

Mathematics

Lessons involving drawing & classifying angles, rays, lines, and line segments concluded recently. Additional lessons on using protractors to measure angles also concluded just recently. Tests involving these lessons were given on 17 May. We will move on with classifying polygons, triangles, and quadrilaterals.

Language Arts

We recently completed lessons involving how to use lose and loose; pair and pairs correctly in sentences. A test was given on 15 May concluding this lesson. We will move on with lessons concerning how to use past and passed; rise and raise in sentences correctly. Short stories are still the focus for reading comprehension. Several of such stories are read and discussed weekly; upon completion, reading comprehension questions are given. Wordly Wise lessons and activities are an ongoing part of the curriculum; a test on lesson 13 was given recently. Lastly, handwriting activities are a continued activity taking place this trimester.

Science

We have concluded science lessons about the Physics of Sound. An additional test on this topic was given on 19 May.

Social Studies

We are currently on week two with our Social Studies unit about Ancient Egypt.

Please check RenWeb for all assignments and test scores for all courses.

-Mr. Gaston

Grades 5/6

Dear Parents,

May is another busy month for students, as they are getting ready for the end of the school year. Students have been busy putting together their portfolios in preparation for student conferences in June. We are also conducting end-of-year QRI language testing with each student in order to determine their growth in the area of oral and reading comprehension skills.

Language Arts

In grammar, students continue to learn about figurative language and expressions. During the past week, they learned about metaphors, and this week, they have been learning how to use and recognize personifications. These types of figurative language are higher level language expressions, but most of the students have risen to the challenge of grasping and understanding the concept behind them. During reading and writing lessons, we often refer to these types of expressions as ‘colorful language’. In writing, students are re-visiting persuasive writing. As more and more topics and issues are arising around the world, students seem to have strong opinions on what they are hearing in the news and in their environment. As a result, we have decided to prolong our writing theme of persuasive writing so that the students can express their thoughts and opinions further on such matters.

Social Studies

In social studies, students have started their final unit study on the Ancient Kingdom of Songhai in Western Africa. They will be studying about the important rulers, the rise and fall of the Empire, and the trade and economic wealth of the Empire.

Math

In math, Grade 5 students have completed their study on Geometry. In this unit, they learned about congruent and similar figures, as well as how to identify symmetrical shapes. They are now learning about Measurement. They are learning about the customary units of length as well as the various metric units of measurement that are used worldwide (i.e. kilometers, meters, centimeters, millimeters). In this unit, they have also been learning how to convert between metric units of measurement. Grade 6 students are just completing their lesson on percents and are now moving on to learning about Solids and Measurement. In this unit, they will be exploring various solid shapes and how to find the area of these solids.

Science

In the past couple of weeks, students have been reading up on the effects of human activity on water pollution. They learned about different kinds of pollutants and used examples from their environment to further explore the causes of water pollution. Students learned about global warming and the effects of acid rain on lakes and rivers.

-Ms. Dibba

Grades 7/8

Greetings from Middle School!

Students are in the process of wrapping up the year. They are finishing their Science unit on Solar Energy, as well as concluding an English Language Arts unit on analyzing short stories.

-Mr. Schilling

7th graders have just completed their first quiz from section A in chapter 10. They will soon start section B where they learn to solve one and two-step equations.

8th graders are finishing section A of chapter 10. They will then take section A quiz before starting section B. In section B, students learn to represent functions that are not linear or quadratic using tables, graphs, and equations. They also learn to evaluate polynomials.

-Ms. Ba

High School

Hi Again,

We are on the last leg of the school year now. Advanced Placement English is now finished, and with great success. The other four classes have started their final units. Here is what’s happening.

AP and SAT testing has finished up for the year. Thank you for makingsure your child had adequate nutrition and sleep to prepare for the exams. Also, thank you to those of you who made sure your child arrived on time.

It is absolutely imperative that they arrive on time for standardized tests.

Once again, our high schoolers are volunteering with Starkey International. I applaud their efforts and willingness to sacrifice their personal time for a good cause. Please be on the look out for their daily volunteer schedule, which was sent home.

Your child should be prepared to treat school days during Ramadan just as they would any other school day. I am looking forward to this being a time of reflection for myself and the students: let’s imagine what many of those less fortunate have to go through on a daily basis.

Because of this, I am encouraging them to exert as much effort as usual. Thank you for your continued support.

-Mr. Porras

Dear Parents,

In Geometry, students are working on the 5th evaluation and last project. They will soon submit both. There is only one unit left. In Unit 6, students will learn about locus of points and transformation of geometric figures.

In Algebra 2, students have just submitted their fifth evaluation. They will soon start chapter 12 on rational expressions and functions. In chapter 12, they will review inverse variations, translate graphs both vertically and horizontally, simplify and combine rational expressions, and solve problems.

In Sociology, students only have two more chapters to cover in unit 4. The two chapters are about education and religion, and sports and the mass media. At the end of unit 4, they will take the fourth evaluation before starting unit 5.